THE BATWOMAN / LA MUJER MURCIELAGO (1968)

Unlike the unreleased $100 million BATGIRL, recently buried by NetFlix*, this slapdash Mexican production (not part of the DC Comics empire!) likely cost less than a million 1968 pesos, yet it’s been in continuous release since it first came out.  Directed by the prolifically untalented René Cardona, 126 credits including an infamous SANTA CLAUS/’59 that boasts a remarkable 2.7 IMDb user score (out of a possible 10), this BATWOMAN rates a ‘stellar’ 4.7.  Much like her male namesake, this crime fighter keeps her identity secret, is rich & bored, and on call by police & her North-of-the-Border F.B.I.  guy.  Unlike Batman, she wrestles professionally (Mexicana style) and apparently gets by sans butler, boy wonder or jet-powered auto.  She does keep a makeup compact case that transforms into a pistol and wears a far more revealing suit: the Bat Bikini.  Yikes!  The story involves a facially scarred, mad-scientist (natch) murdering athletic wrestlers to collect a gland extract he’s using on Barbie-sized Fishmen he hopes to grow into full-sized fish-monsters he’ll use to take over the oceans.  All this silliness has long supported a cult (half celebratory/half derisive), but recently, mostly because of lead Maura Monti, gaining something of a feminist respect (ignore the tag ending – ‘Eek!, a mouse’), and now a serious film restoration.  The enthusiasm something of a stretch.  If only Cardona had a clue on where to put the camera, when to move it, and how to stage action . . . or inaction.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Hard to believe, but sophisticated director Philip Kaufman got his start (along with Jon Voight) on something along these lines and about this budget in FEARLESS FRANK/’67.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *$100 mill a guestimate since NetFlix ain’t talking.

STAMBUL GARDEN (aka BLURRED LINES) / RÄUBERHÄNDE (2021)

From German director Ilker Çatak, opposites attract coming-of-age film about two late teen boys blunting their passage thru tricky life phases with lots of booze, drugs & last-call parties.  One a middle-class German blond (Emil von Schönfels) breaking up with his girl; the other, ethnic-mix dark (Mekyas Mulugeta), breaking away from his unstable, easily addicted single-mom.  With school finally over, they’ve made a pact to travel to Turkey where a missing father might be found, but with little thought as to how they are going to go about this.  No matter, they’re bound to go, joined at the hip (if these skinny mates had hips!), but in crisis after the blonde kid winds up screwing the other’s mom.  Substitution for his pal?  (He’ll later have a threesome wet dream about it while earlier in the film, his BFF casually interrupts a session with the girlfriend.)  Going anyway, their Turkish adventure quickly pulls them apart (one feels as if he, at last, fits right in/the other always just outside the circle), the boys easy physicality turned bickering bromance.  Ilker Çatak doesn’t quite hit the personal growth and revelations he’s shooting for, but sure nails the commonplace reality of how traveling together can overstrain any relationship.  The film lands as something of a down payment for better things to come, but there’s plenty to keep you involved.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE (1945)

Goofy little Home Front ‘War-Effort’ musical must have been planned as a major release before 20th/FOX saw the war finishing up and downsized to a 1'17" running time.  Why else plump for TechniColor, top tech & producer William Perlberg?  (Rodgers & Hammerstein’s STATE FAIR his other musical that year.)  Why borrow Warners’ Joan Leslie; Paramount’s Fred MacMurray; and pay the price for B’way’s Kurt Weill & Ira Gershwin just off the hugely successful LADY IN THE DARK (on stage ‘43/on film ‘44), with FIREBRAND OF FLORENCE currently running.*  Overnight, why care if MacMurray can’t get past 4-F status & into uniform?  Or that his scrap metal drive turns up a genie who gets him in the Army (George Washington’s!); on a naval ship (Christopher Columbus’s!); or into the Marines (with the WACS!).  Morrie Ryskind, of many a Marx Bros. film, goes for non-sequitur laughs & earns the occasional chuckle, and the cast (other than Gene Sheldon’s overplayed genie) are perfectly pleasant; but it’s wan stuff.  Or is except for one miraculous reel where Weill/Gershwin create a sort of mini-Gilbert & Sullivan operetta on the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria, in one of the most melodic, rib-tickling, lunatic sung-thru sequences ever put on film.  If only this scene weren’t such a lonely island of wisenheimer musical sophistication among also-ran material.  So, in spite of reasonably solid production values and charming picture-book special effects, you’ll see why utilitarian director Gregory Ratoff was assigned to get it done . . . and get the hell out.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Alas, the film LADY IN THE DARK, while commercially successful, is a travesty of the stage show.  (But check out the hilarious over-sized furniture in a psychiatrist’s office.  Yikes!)  Instead, here’s that Christopher Columbus number.  (HINT: Tap the settings wheel to up the resolution.)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDlBqCW3Z18   And Google away to find superb audio excepts of the magnificent, if doomed FIREBRAND OF FLORENCE, especially the opening number ‘Come to Florence (Civic Song).’

RETURN TO DUST / YIN RU CHEN YAN (2022)

If the pacing is deliberate in Ruijun Li’s look at a newly married couple following traditional rural ways in modern China*, so too is the lifestyle on display.  It makes for a tough, lovely film about ‘Fourth Brother,’ low on the pecking order of his extended family, finally being given an ‘arranged’ marriage after decades of farm work for a more favored brother.  His match an unwanted runt-of-the-litter afterthought, physically challenged with a weak left side, bladder issues, and unable to have children.  Deposited in a rundown house with forgotten farmland to work, the two make a considerable go of every difficulty.  HER: unnervingly withdrawn, but demonstrating willingness and work ethic.  HIM: with unending stamina and surefooted ability to tackle any issue farm or home throws at them; remarkably patient helping his wife overcome obstacles to the extent possible.  Their accomplishments large and small both challenging and fascinating as laid out by Li and his cast in ultra-realistic full-shot coverage and the naturalism of non-pro Renlin Wu as the husband and pro Hai-Qing as the wife.  Hope, success and tragedy over the course of a year prove irresistibly compelling with Li not ashamed to flavor his work with occasional technical flourishes (check out the roof raising camera angles) and appropriate emotional sweetening via subtle music underscoring.  The film a gem.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *If comments can be believed, the film was pulled from distribution in spite of a succssful opening when authorities decided to suppress it for showing a backward side of rural, still underdeveloped wheat/corn dependent North-Central China.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  An ‘out there’ suggestion: Compare & contrast ultra-naturalism against haute old-school Hollywood filmmaking of faux China and the standard YellowFace casting of mid-‘30s Golden-Age studio practice seen in THE GOOD EARTH/’36.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/good-earth-1937.html

TOVARICH (1937)

Paramount Pictures’ continental sophistication comes to Warner Brothers, along with Claudette Colbert, lenser Charles Lang & dress designer Travis Banton*, for Jacques Deval’s international hit play about ‘White’ Russian nobility taking house positions in Paris rather than touch the ℱ40 million given to them by the late Tsar to support the counter-revolution.  Working off Robert Sherwood’s just closed B’way adaptation, scripter Casey Robinson notes how close the family situation is to MY MAN GODFREY, and has Colbert & husband Charles Boyer get the house & family in order with expertise in fencing, dancing, singing and poker, even managing to get the parents back to a single bed (implied if not actually shown).  But when the new servants have to serve a formal dinner to current Russian diplomat Basil Rathbone, the Revolutionary who tortured them before they escaped, now out to collect that ℱ40 mill, the facade crumbles on both sides of their charade.  The first in a long run of Warners pics for Anatole Litvak, reunited with Boyer after MAYERLING/’36, the tone now feels a bit forced in the first half (it was only Litvak’s second Hollywood pic), but gathers strength as comedy gets downplayed once Rathbone comes into the story for a more serious, if still lightly sentimental, tone.  They even manage to finesse the proletariat/aristo divide in a satisfying manner.  Lovely work by everyone.  Though how echt Hollywood to have Americans & Brits playing Parisians and two actual French natives as the Russians.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Not so many Hollywood films, other than The THIN MAN series, let long married couples display this much sexual interest in each other.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Seems very extravagant for those penny-pinching Warner Brothers to bring in Banton when Colbert spends most of the film in a maid’s uniform!  Maybe he just did the glam number she wears right at the end.  And cinematographer Lang apparently fought with Colbert about the usual problem, shooting from her ‘bad’ side.  Though they must have made up as he went on to six more films with her back at Paramount.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Similar elements/reverse angle; perfected by Ernst Lubitsch in NINOTCHKA/’39.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/12/ninotchka-1939.html

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS (2011)

Proudly romantic/melodramatic, novelist Sara Gruen cleverly plants her sturdy depression-era love triangle in the self-contained world of a traveling one-ring circus.  It’s effective, but those who haven’t read the book may wonder if its old-fashioned storytelling virtues seem as generic and over-processed as they do on-screen; faults abetted by a production too smooth by half and leading players that yield stylistic points to stars of earlier eras.*  Robert Pattinson, in the midst of his TWILIGHT years, answers all emotions with a shy smile as an all but graduated veterinarian-on-the-run who hops a circus train and winds up ‘house vet’ and love interest to daredevil artiste Reese Witherspoon, uncomfortably wed to psycho-sadistic owner Christoph Waltz.  Reasonably well-caught period atmosphere* helps prop up a mess of underdeveloped supporting characters, but does less to make sense of the film’s big climax.  (Get back at the boss by destroying your own job; at the height of the Depression?)  Waltz does his creepy pendulum act (fawning or frightening as needed to get us to the next story beat) while Pattinson & Witherspoon have more chemistry with their new performing elephant than they do with each other.  Director Francis Lawrence, hoping to have his cake and eat it too, tries for tasteful and corny at the same time (like driving a car with the emergency break on).  But in spite of a lack of zest, enough hokum sneaks past the sobriety gatekeepers for the show to go on.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Say, Kirk Douglas, Montgomery Clift & Susan Hayward in for Waltz, Pattinson & Witherspoon; the boys, at least when dressed up, even looking a bit like Kirk & Monty.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Depression-era circus atmosphere was never better caught than in the original DUMBO/’41.  (Tim Burton’s live-action redo best avoided.)  And for something overblown & three-ringy, there’s insanity to spare in C.B. DeMille’s THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH/’52, with Gloria Grahame & Lyle Bettger anticipating the Witherspoon/Waltz relationship.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/11/dumbo-2019.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-greatest-show-on-earth-1952.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  You can see just the sort of period detail ELEPHANTS fumbles when its filmmakers go to the trouble of cutting in a close-up of a 78rpm record nearing its groove run-out limit only to continue playing for another two minutes.  Vinyl may have made a comeback, but apparently shellac remains a complete mystery to younger filmmakers.

LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE (1951)

Long past his M-G-M Golden Boy days (top-grossing silent THE BIG PARADE 26 years back), King Vidor finally changed studios with a 3-pic set at Warners: THE FOUNTAINHEAD/’49, BEYOND THE FOREST/’49, LIGHTNING); losing prestige on each assignment.  All three OTT romantic mellers, all three slightly bonkers (loaded with ‘bad’ laughs), all three supremely entertaining in different ways.  (Post-Warners, Vidor’s RUBY GENTRY/’52 also in this vein.)  LIGHTNING, last @ Warner Bros., reduces him A+ to B+ level, but still offers top tech and rising acting talent.  If only the story made more sense.  Richard Todd, in hiding after barely beating a murder rap, meets-cute (if darkly) with Ruth Roman’s actress on a health cure break when she takes a wrong turn on her way to Mercedes McCambridge’s unexpectedly closed Texas ‘Dude Ranch.’  Roman the only person in the State of Texas unaware of Todd’s dicey past; McCambridge the jury member who held off on conviction (empaneled in spite of knowing the accused and the victim, his wife!); Todd waiting for BFF Zachary Scott (in a nothing role) to get him an engineering job out of state.  And that’s only half of Margaret Echard’s unlikely coincidence-happy storyline.  You won’t believe a moment, but Vidor ploughs ahead, this born-and-bred Texan managing real atmosphere whenever they let him off the dead soundstage exteriors for some brief location work.  (It’s only upstate California, but Vidor lets his Main Street and local Drug Store setups strikingly show what might have been.)  Vidor never was able to get back to his more personal cinematic ways, ending his career with (of all things) international epics: WAR AND PEACE/’56; SOLOMON AND SHEBA/’59; both behemoths unexpectedly worthwhile.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Roman now largely remembered for her other 1951 film: Hitchcock’s SHADOW OF A DOUBT.  While the underrated Todd, himself a plausible choice for the Robert Walker role in DOUBT, was just off his Hitchcock pic, STAGE FRIGHT/’50.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/stage-fright-1950.html  OR:  Check out all the Vidor pics mentioned above by using the Search Box.  (Upper left corner/Main Site Only; iPhone users scroll down to the main site link.)  Note Vidor’s WAR & PEACE is discussed in our posting on the 1966 Russian version.

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU (2018)

Debuting writer/director Boots Riley* overreaches for Swiftian satire (don’t worry, no babies eaten, more GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS/’92 meets THE OFFICE [Stateside version], but with a hipster's vibe & heavy minority casting) as a debt-ridden LaKeith Stanfield (very winning) signs up for a commission-only position as a telemarketer.  But Hellish office conditions lead to labor organization & work stoppage just as his natural abilities are being recognized with a promotion.  What’s an upstanding/union sympathizing employee to do?  Especially when his dream job means luring desperate worker-bees to the WorryFree lifestyle, a camouflaged Slave Market, and none too subtle metamorphoses from human to horseflesh.  Yikes!  Is it TO SERVE MAN from THE TWILIGHT ZONE or Pinocchio tricked into a stay on Pleasure Island (Hee-Haw!!) . . . make that Dr. Moreau’s ISLAND OF LOST SOULS?  (See various iterations here: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/search?q=ISLAND+OF+LOST+SOULS)  But in spite of a great cast and clever structural dodges to manage on a tight budget, the concept shrinks rather than expands with every metaphysical addition.  And much of the silliness that ought to pay off doesn’t.  The idea of ‘talking white’ as a path to success might work if played straight, but here it’s nothing but a silly voice.  Richard Pryor shows just what’s missing with his immortal ‘white dude’s’ voice saying ‘Fuckin’ A.’

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Considering its modest budget, SORRY must have at least earned out, but Riley’s had no bites for another feature in spite of strong reviews (frankly stronger than deserved) and comparisons to GET OUT’s writer/director Jordan Peele.

KILL THE MESSENGER (2014)

In something of a mid-'90s sequel to the even more Byzantine Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-‘80s, MESSENGER follows investigating reporter Gary Webb, working for a mid-sized SoCal paper, to Nicaragua after he’s baited with ‘leaked’ classified reports on a drugs-for-arms scheme that reverberates back to C.I.A. handlers and the crack-cocaine crisis in major American cities.  Is the C.I.A. acting as inner-city ‘drug pushers’ to fund anti-government rebels in a foreign country?   But Webb’s dangerous assignment, successfully accomplished and notably published to the chagrin of larger papers, turns out to be the easy part.  It’s also merely Act One of what morphs into a CIA cover-up/smear campaign to destroy the story and Webb with help from types likely (other government agencies) and unlikely (major-league press guys who should have known better after Iran-Contra).  The story, no doubt more complex and grey-filled than the film wants it to be, still Front Page worthy.  Yet the film never fully taps its potential.  Partly a problem of construction, running Iran-Contra photo-montage under the opening credits seriously confuses the issue right from the start; but mostly it comes down to overly fussy work by lead Jeremy Renner (twenty-six small bits of business when three strong ones would do); director Michael Cuesta (similarly over working material when not putting the camera in the wrong spot); and the way their presentational tics catch on to the rest of the cast & crew.  Only Lucas Hedges (Renner’s emotionally bruised teenage son) and a very fine Ray Liotta (alas only for a single scene as a confirming source) manage to avoid contamination.  Kill the messenger, indeed.

DOUBLE-BILL:  The Washington Post takes it on the chin here.  See them fight for the good guys in the ‘mother’ of all investigative journalist pics, ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN/’76.

EL CONDE (2023)

Facile writer/director Pablo Larraín had a ‘lightbulb’ moment reimagining Chilean Dictator General Augusto Pinochet, the military chief who ousted democratically elected Socialist President Salvador Allende in the ‘70s, as an eternal, self-regenerating Vampire.  Alas, it’s such a good idea, he never bothered to figure out exactly what to do with his deliciously subversive concept.  After lovely PINK opening credits, we stick with monochrome, stepping all the way back to the French Revolution where we meet Pinoche(t), newly vampirized and slurping blood from Marie Antoinette’s freshly lopped head*, vowing revenge against all revolutions!  After that, it’s no great leap to Chile’s military coup & Pinochet’s staggering human rights violations, violent repression and notorious ‘disappearances.’  Yet Larraín appears uninterested, jumping past Pinochet’s 20-yr reign-of-terror to detail some fantasy retirement where he plots on a vast ranch with (and against) his family (wife, five kids - all mortal) over stocks, bonds & cash.  Design & effects all simple, elegant, effective (cityscape flights especially well handled), and the addition of a specially trained Nun/Accountant sent in to equitably divide (or is it bring down?) the ill-gotten estate.  The film wonderfully cast, Paula Luchsinger’s nun

a dead ringer for Falconetti in Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARK/’28

adding an accidental (?) mordant touch to gruesome doings like fresh human hearts being whipped up in an old Dan Ackroyd Bass-O-Matic for rejuvenating smoothies.  A pick-me-up that comes in handy when Pinochet’s Mom/Lover shows up in the form of (wait for it) Margaret Thatcher.  Yikes!  But it’s one thing to make a Vampire film; quite another to vamp your way past what first seemed an irresistible idea.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Madame Tussauds not too far from this scenario, ‘borrowing’ Marie Antoinette’s head before burial to make an impression for her start-up museum.  True story!

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Behind this fabulist version: Patricio Guzmán’s THE BATTLE OF CHILE/’75.  http://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-battle-of-chile-la-batalla-de-chile.html

SCOTT WALKER: 30 CENTURY MAN (2006)

Possibly by not delving into his personal life away from music, filmmaker Stephan Kijak nabbed a rare interview with reclusive ‘Pop’ musician turned art-song visionary Scott Walker (1943-2019).  The film part of a surprisingly robust genre of Music Phenoms Gone Missing (think BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB/’99, SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN/’12, a battery of Brian Wilson/Beach Boys probes), this one just good enough to get its strange story across.  An Ohio boy who rose to Fab Brit popster in the mid-‘60s (think you don’t know Walker? - hit this LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q11ium_-Lv8), the three Walker Brothers, neither Walkers nor Brothers, one of the many bands that briefly ‘rivaled’ the Beatles; on tour top-billed over the likes of Cat Stevens & Jimi Hendrix.  But lead vocalist Scott quickly turned his back on the whole scene, turning out progressively ‘difficult’ albums that sunk to cult status.  Falling out of sight for gaps lasting decades, he never lost his fringe appeal and eventually came back with decidedly unconventional/influential stream-of-conscious albums that got under the skin of many a better known performer.  (As singer, Walker no rock or R&B type, but with the basic vocal chops of a jazz crooner.)  Among many (see poster for names), David Bowie shows up for an interview and exec produced, and it's impossible to miss how much Bowie picked up from him vocally.  Ironic as he was part of the next wave that replaced Walker on the charts.  Ultimately, the film leaves you with more questions than you started with, but maybe that’s the point, getting Walker back in the conversation.  Nevertheless, his late work is really quite peculiar!  Enjoy.

THE ESCAPE ARTIST (1982)

Considering her regrettably short C.V. (just six features), you’d imagine there’d be plenty of interest in any screenplay from Melissa Mathison, especially one released between her first & third scripts: THE BLACK STALLION/’79 and E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL/’89.  Yet this often beautifully caught, if admittedly uneven, YA fable about a kid Harry Houdini wannabe has become as invisible as a magician’s grand finale.  The problem’s easy enough to spot, the second storyline, a doozy about our junior magician stumbling into a city corruption scandal, becomes the narrative motor when what we need to follow is the coming-of-age of our teenage illusionist as he attempts to match the skill set of his late father, in his day the one true rival to Harry Houdini.  (Also, the storyline yells period piece which isn’t followed up on at all.)  Griffin O’Neal (lookalike brother to Tatum, son of Ryan) is the preternaturally gifted prestidigitator (impressively demonstrating real close-work magic) who lives with his Aunt & Uncle, third-rate nightclub magicians and longs to ‘get in the act,’ but winds up in the middle of a family feud between Mayor Desi Arnaz, spiteful looney-tunes son Raul Julia, and a purloined wallet that’s the key to exposing a financial scandal.  Francis Coppola’s Zoetrope company produced and may be responsible for much of the wrong path plotting, but the parts of the film that show O’Neal coming to terms with his past and his talent are too good, too uncommonly individual to miss.  Best set piece is the extended jail break, beautifully timed, loaded with suspense & comic bits (watch for a jail trustee with a food cart), ending with a father & son wish-fulfillment dream that, if not real magic, is something nearly as rare, real magical filmmaking.  The great cinematographer Caleb Deschanel debuted (and pretty much ended) his directing days here.  A huge pity.  So too Mathison’s tiny output.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, THE BLACK STALLION.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-black-stallion-1979.html

TREELESS MOUNTAIN / NA-MOO-EOBS-NEUN SAN (2008)

Korean-born director So Yong Kim, now in rotation on prestige international streamers, began with small indies like this startlingly fine DOGME style film on two little girls shuttled from Mom to Aunt to Grandparents after Dad leaves the family flat.  Or so we assume, the film never tells us anything the girls don’t know.  Jin and Bin, about 5 and 7, but looking far younger, are left largely on their own during the day while Mom looks for work?; raises cash for food & rent?; tries to contact her estranged/missing husband?  They don’t really know and neither do we.  Amusing themselves on the streets with local kids, they don’t appear to be enrolled in school or any sort of program, they’re fiercely loyal to each other when not fiercely fighting each other.  But when Mom reaches her limit, she drops them at her sister-in-law’s small apartment and takes off in hopes of reconnecting with her missing husband.  Auntie not exactly the mothering type (neither helicopter nor tiger!), yet the children, who feel abandoned, adjust in their own way to her hands-off approach, meeting kids around the neighborhood and raising cash to fill a piggy bank by catching and roasting grasshoppers to sell to other kids.  (Mom’s told them when the piggy bank is filled with coins, she’ll return home.)  But after getting used to this new situation, they’re cast off yet again when Auntie leaves them with her parents out in the country.  Granddad none too pleased; Grandma a bit gruff, but the closest thing to a warm personality in here.  Again, the kids bicker, stand together, and adjust.  Two tiny survivors at whatever is thrown at them.  A ‘downer’ storyline that’s somehow hopeful and enlightening showing how children cope.  Kim makes this all completely believable and, in spite of their treatment, uplifting.  The two girls infinitely resourceful and charming; the older one also strikingly lovely.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *In his delightful kid ensemble piece, SMALL CHANGE/’76, François Truffaut argues it can be an advantage to be disadvantaged as a child.  It certainly was for him.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/small-change-1976.html

BEING THERE (1979)

A distance of over forty years has only improved Jerky Kosinski’s off-beat fable about an abandoned simpleton who unwittingly bears a gift for reflecting back just what a series of interlocutors are looking for.  When it first came out, the Emperor’s New Clothes aspect of the story felt more like political pandering, but with real life events having all but overtaken anything in Robert C. Jones’ script, and with Hal Ashby’s non-pushy approach to directing more distinctive than ever, the film now slants toward humanistic parable.  Peter Sellers, in his penultimate role, is a miraculous slow-walking/slow-talking paradox of one-note variety as Chance the Gardener, taken off the street by chance (what else?) then making a hit as a Delphic sage of finance in the midst of Washington D.C. social & political society: helping a powerful old man accept death; opening sexual pathways to his imminent widow; giving the President of the United States less an economic strategy than an economic philosophy; etc.  All of this played out in hushed tones that would have stymied just about any other group of above & below the line creatives.  The film is impossible to imagine without Peter Sellers, giving a masterclass in heightened restraint, supported by an all but pitch perfect cast.  Especially Richard Dysart as the aging Melvin Douglas’s personal physician, the one man who sees thru the mirage, but reserves the right on whether to point out the missing oasis.  Scripter Jones also deserves special nods for knowing when (and how) to use narrative ellipses to jump past impossible situations without having it feel like a cheat.  And if a few moments still have that point-making stink to them, and the ending not something anyone seemed happy about*, the film casts such an unusual spell, you’ll hardly notice, or rather, hardly be bothered.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Everyone streams everything these days, but the Criterion DVD comes with an excellent Making of . . . EXTRA that backgrounds that all too concrete ending and much more.

UNHOLY PARTNERS (1941)

Ten years back, Edward G. Robinson played a tabloid editor under director Mervyn LeRoy in FIVE STAR FINAL/’31*, a superior Warners Early Talkie that warned about the unchecked power of the popular press.  Now, they repeat roles at M-G-M in this inferior mediocrity.  This time, Eddie G., just back from WWI, ankles his stuffy old newspaper to invent the tabloid format, scruffy, illustrated & scandal-happy  (Think New York Daily News, but here ironically named The Mercury*) taking along cub reporter William Orr & lovelorn acolyte Laraine Day.  (Day does nothing for Eddie, but then she did nothing for anyone.)  Writing up the news before it’s happened and dishing on society nabobs, they not only make a splash, but ruffle the feathers of businessman Edward Arnold, the shady ‘pal’ who put up the cash for Robinson and thinks he not only owns, but also runs the paper.  Robinson disagrees; and puts his life on the line to prove it.  Fun to hear a young Marsha Hunt singing so well as she pivots from bloated Arnold to bland Orr, but the only true surprise comes in seeing how quickly LeRoy devolved from shiny boy wonder at ‘30s Warners to go-along corporate player at M-G-M in the ‘’40s.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *As mentioned, FIVE STAR FINAL, still moving and thoughtful.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/10/five-star-final-1931.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Ironic because ‘Mercury’ was the name chosen by Orson Welles for his various outfits (stage, screen, radio, recording) whose first Hollywood project, out two months before this, was that other 1941 newspaper story CITIZEN KANE.  If you ever wanted to know why Hollywood felt so threatened by Welles, and why they needed to quash him, compare this nonentity with the Welles classic.  The two films not so much playing by separate rules, but playing different games.  And Welles might have pulled it off if WWII hadn’t stopped cinematic advances in their tracks for much of the ‘40s.

STILETTO (1969)

One-time exploitation producer Joseph E. Levine (see SHOWMAN/’63: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/10/showman-1963.html) had gone downright classy with recent Oscar-winners like THE PRODUCERS/’67, THE GRADUATE/’67 and THE LION IN WINTER/‘68.  So how did his second adaptation of a Harold Robbins bestseller, following 1964's top-grossing THE CARPETBAGGERS, turn into a ‘B-pic?’  (He’d fail again next year on Robbins’ THE ADVENTURERS/’70, not seen here.)  Whatever the reason, Levine seems to have given up during pre-production, hiring tv-sized talent in all departments and getting what he paid for.  Series tv director Bernard Kowalski sends jet-setting playboy Alex Cord off with alternating gal pals (Britt Ekland; Barbara McNair) on globe-trotting missions to take out possible witnesses against mob guy Joseph Wiseman.  Mush-mouthed Patrick O’Neal’s the police dick in charge of keeping someone alive long enough to testify in court for lawyer John Dehner.  There’s an artsy, hard-to-follow prologue (still shots in sepia!) showing why Cord follows instructions, but execution (in sex as well as in executions) ain’t lively enough (in gun & stiletto play) or titillating enough (to bed with blonde Ekland or Black McNair?) to cause much of a stir.  Though the abundant over-teased ‘70s hair much appreciated.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Coarse as it is, between Edward Dmytryk’s professionalism and Paramount Picture’s polish, THE CARPETBAGGERS still makes for dandy entertainment.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-carpetbaggers-1964.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Lots of early sightings here: Olympia Dukakis, Charles Durning, Raul Julia, M. Emmet Walsh; plus a late one for the great Eduardo Ciannelli.

THE BATTLE OF CHILE / LA BATALLA DE CHILE (1975)

Patricio Guzmán’s monumental three-part documentary on Chile’s three-years of popular, if shaky, Socialist/Marxist government under Salvador Allende in the early ‘70s and how it was systematically undermined by forces within (fickle political alliances/old money/the military) and without (international financial institutions/USA-CIA interference) is better known by reputation then by actual viewings.  (Confused with THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS/’65 which only looks like a documentary?*)   It can be a bit tricky navigating all the parties, principles and acronyms, but you don’t really need a scorecard to keep track of speeches and man-on-the-street interviews since the political range falls into three basic camps: Hard Left; Center-Right; Far Right, with Part 1 showing attempts to reorganize newly Nationalized industry, replacing top-down decision-making with ground-up collective ideas (or is it ideals?); while Part 2 tracks the loss of political backing and the military moving from center-right to hard right to coup.  Generally brought out not so much in clear thru lines of action, but in a hit-or-miss fashion according to what footage was captured.  Part 3 far less essential, going back to cover material that could have been in Part 1* though it does have the most magical shot in the whole piece as a man pulls a perfectly balanced cart loaded to the gills seeming to float above the ground, his feet hardly touching the road as he speeds along.  (Not the most memorable shot, mind you, which is obviously the cameraman filming his own death-shot.  Yet another cameraman later ‘disappeared’ by Pinochet’s military.)  Hopefully, a recent restoration (not seen here), will bring the set to new viewers.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Unconfuse yourself by watching THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS/’65.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/battle-of-algiers-1965.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Part 3 also contains some unfortunate talk reminiscent of Stalinist scapegoating of Ukraine’s Kulak class during his campaign of mass starvation to enforce farm collectivation policies.

VERBOTEN! (1959)

Leave it to crackpot iconoclast writer/director Samuel Fuller, the man with the tabloid touch, to go da capo on the famous WWII ‘V For Victory’ opening tattoo from Beethoven’s Fifth (it’s Morse Code for ‘V’) using rifles to repeat the percussive rhythm as they advance into a German town.  And that’s just the opening of this offensively crude tale of a German woman of dicey allegiance who helps a wounded U.S. liberator, hiding him from Nazis before quickly marrying him for those post-war perks.  And wouldn’t you just know, she ends up honestly falling for the naïf only to lose him when he gets wised up to her initial game plan.  Heck, hadn’t he quit the army just so he could stay around for German reconstruction . . . and her!  Targeted as an Ugly American by local Commie Provocateurs, dissed by his wife’s Nazi-loyalist kid brother, used as cover by a seemingly sympathetic German who’s really an undercover  Neo-fascist plotter.  Not to worry, the kid will change his tune after seeing newsreel coverage of the Nuremberg Trials, the wife will untangle her feelings, and the false German friend will ignite a fire that permanently separates the good guys from the bad.  Shot on a dime, and looking it, Fuller has particular trouble integrating real war footage, while the Nuremberg highlights reel is distressingly used as cheap emotional fodder.  The film still worth a look to see a standout perf from Tom Pittman as the false German friend.  With his striking looks and talent, he’d have been heard of if not for a deadly car wreck some months before this film was even released.  Ironically, a big James Dean fan, Pittman had been driving the same make & model car that Dean crashed just a couple of years back.

WATCH THIS/NOT THAT/LINK:  After a high water mark under contract at 20th/Fox, Fuller’s career grew wildly uneven, split between indie features and tv series.  This one bookended by better, if typically uneven, post-FOX work: FORTY GUNS/’57 and THE CRIMSON KIMONO/’59.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/forty-guns-1957.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-crimson-kimono-1969.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: Paid to an astoundingly awful love theme sung over the credits by Paul Anka.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_SUZeBNLQs

BIRDBOY: THE FORGOTTEN CHILDREN / PSICONAUTAS, LOS NIÑOS OLVIDADOS (2015)

Don’t let the kid-friendly hand-drawn animation style (or GKIDS distribution) fool you; this is the stuff of nightmares for five-yr-olds, something to mark you for life.  A punishingly bleak dystopian journey for a cast of mixed rodents & birds whose ‘idyllic’ past was a lost chemical/industrial wasteland.  Ah, the good old days!  Now, Birdboy and a trio of mousey pals search for a way out.  Helped by Pigboy (and his hefty piggybank) even though he can’t come along as he might be needed to help Mom die via drug overdose.  (Yikes!)  Leaving this Hellhole will require a ‘Black Market’ boat and getting past a series of gangs & demons, including a shadowy inner demon germinating within Birdboy himself.  (A real coup de cinéma, that.  As basic as it comes technically; stunningly effective as ego/id construct.)  Navigating their way past danger whenever possible, fighting as needed thru a junkyard landscape actively defended by enemy rats & diseased hoarders, sure of valuables buried under the surface.  This Spanish production, a devastating blend of Cartoon Network stylings and Goya’s war atrocity sketchbooks, hooks you immediately with content, characterization & drawing mode.  Visionary in capturing the banality of evil with animation; equally so in how it develops into a journey of hope and defeat, perhaps a victory thru defeat.  Seen here in its very fine English-language version, but if available, try Spanish with subtitles.  Or both.  It’s worth a second look.  (NOTE: Another Family Friendly label meant only for tweens and older.)

DOUBLE-BILL: Fans of the early/pre-digital seasons of SAMURAI JACK/’01 should definitely take a look.  And those who haven’t caught up with that Cartoon Network/Adult Swim series in for a visual treat.

A HIDDEN LIFE (2019)

Along with Whit Stillman and Terence Davies, Terrence Malick’s reputation has been coddled by an excessive absence-makes- the-heart-grow-fonder factor.  Once these guys stop taking five to ten year breaks between films, they’re found out, commercially & critically the bloom very much off the rose.  Out a mere two years since his last bomb release, this quasi-religious tale of WWII martyrdom* by an Austrian farmer/father/military reservist turned conscientious objector/Hitler loyalty pledge refusenik, was less disdained than ignored.  Did no one on his staff have the balls to mention this fact-based story is THE SOUND OF MUSIC/’65 meets A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS/’66?  Those two also fact-based stories . . . well, sort of.  The parallels to MUSIC truly bizarre: military dad (here a reservist); gaggle of kids; Pantheistic Alpine views used as personal motif; perfect earth-figure mom; same running time (174"/176" - here wildly self-indulgent); same country & time period; same narrative line (well, till the end); all served up with catchy music (Richard Rodgers/J.S. Bach); even the same damn studio 20th/Fox!  Shot for some reason entirely with various levels of distorting WideScreen lenses, some looking like those early ‘Scope lenses that had odd visual artifacts cinematographers tried to hide, here encouraged with ‘fisheye’ effects.   Less explainable, Malick’s breakdown in narrative control.  I thought Dad had died two times over with an hour’s running time still to go.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Sure enough, SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF CHRIST the next Malick project.   Currently in post-production, he’s probably already finished but knows its reception will improve if he holds off till at least five years pass between the new film and this award-winning disappearing act.

THE STOLEN RANCH (1926)

Director-in-chrysalis William Wyler, captured here in his early twenties plugging away at Universal Pictures, alternating two-reel Western shorts with the occasional five-reel Western feature, often with regular leading man Fred Humes.  Most of these films long gone (and not much to be missed if contemporary reviews can be believed), so we’re lucky this surviving five-reeler is such a charmer.  (Possibly thanks to a lot of on set rewriting; possibly by Wyler.)  It follows a pair of WWI buds (note freshly shot war footage), the two very bromantic after swapping life saves in the war which left one severely shell-shocked.  Now out West back home, with an inherited ranch to run, our shell-shocked vet lucky his pal (Humes) plans to hang around to keep him from freaking out whenever a shot rings out.  Especially since a couple of con men have counterfeited a fake will and plan to sell the farm from its shell-shocked rightful owner.  The buyer’s a neighboring rancher with a pretty daughter who soon develops an eye for the wounded vet while his fellow vet, his protector, hired on the ranch where the forgers are plotting, hits it off with the pretty gal he shares K.P. duty with.  (Humes is staying undercover to expose the scam and no one knows he’s the wounded vet’s BFF nor that he’s an expert horseman.)  Boilerplate stuff, but what a swell job Wyler makes of it.  Pacing, horsey showmanship, handsome locations, daring use of blackout action, great shot composition on the romantic roundelay mix-ups (how’d Wyler find the time to get these things so precise on a 6-day shoot?), neat comic relief (check out the potato juggling on K.P.), with the forgotten Fred Humes putting out darn pleasant aw-shucks two-fisted Western appeal.   Modest fare, but doing just what it came to do.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Only the second credit for cinematographer Alan Jones which means Wyler likely took charge photographically.  It helps explains why Wyler’s partnership with lensing icon Gregg Toland only warmed up once someone told Wyler not to tell Toland what lens, what lights and what angles to use on every set up.  ALSO: Note Wyler’s natural use of compound silent storytelling as when Humes starts getting on with his romance while on kitchen duty; turning potato peeling into a bit of comic relief; listening thru the door on the plot to steal the ranch from his shell-shocked pal; and playing dumb when he’s nearly caught.  Four or five narrative balls in the air all at once without breaking a sweat.  Maybe all newbie directors should make five-reel silent Westerns instead of going to film school.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  See Wyler triumphantly emerge from his apprenticeship on his last silent, THE SHAKEDOWN/’29.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-shakedown-1929.html

LA NANA / THE MAID (2009)

Breakout film (deservedly so) for Chilean writer/director Sebastián Silva dives straight into a spiral of emotional and mental decline for Raquel (Catalina Saavedra), the overwhelmed housemaid to a rich/handsome family of seven.  Dutifully celebrating her forty-first birthday & twenty years of service, it soon becomes impossible to ignore escalating friction on the job, especially with the two older girls.  Truth is, Raquel has no life outside her ‘work family,’ and is only just hanging on, ineffectively self-medicating against headaches & dizziness.  The head of the house looks the other way (or sneaks off for a round of golf) while the wife tries to make things work with offers of help, including assistants (one young & docile/one an old tartar), each viewed by Raquel as threats she childishly needs to vanquish.  But just when you expect the film to devolve into some sort of violence or tragedy, Silva believably shifts gears in the most thoughtful way imaginable after physical collapse brings in a third-time’s-the-charm assistant in the form of a wonderfully centered woman from the countryside (Mariana Loyola) who gives Raquel something she’s never experienced before: friendship.  The third act here is almost breathtakingly original, even wise; so too the emotionally satisfying epilogue.  Serious and very entertaining, a rare talent is born.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  The lack of villains here as noticeable as in those very early Jonathan Demme films, before he began keeping score.  It didn’t last long for Demme (two films!); here’s hoping Silva continues to honor Jean Renoir’s dictum that everyone has their reasons.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Among many gifts, Silva shows a rare knack in the use of non-exploitative casual nudity.  Usually for narrative or character building, but also for generating big honest laughs.  It’s stopping me from sticking a Family Friendly label on this; don’t let it stop you.

INCIDENT IN AN ALLEY (1962)

A real nothingburger.  The penultimate film of the prolifically untalented Edward L. Cahn, going out not with a bang, but with a whimper.  (Whom were these tiny atrocities made for?  Even Roger Corman had more time & money at his disposal; more attitude in spite of his own shallow skill set.  And Corman’s films always had a place as Drive-In ‘second features.’ Did Cahn get the triple-feature slot at inner-city flop house bijoux?)  This one, based on a short story by Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling, starts with low-wattage WEST SIDE STORY vibes as a gang of teen toughs rob a music store and trigger the alarm.  A cleaning lady stumbles in, gets whacked and the hoods run off in all directions.  That ends the fun part of the film as we switch gears from delinquent teens to ADAM-12 patrol cops.  (ADAM-12 looks good in comparison.)  In spite of yelling STOP, one teen is shot in the back and dies.  Why he’s only 14 says the ashen cop.  And while the courts may let him off, his conscience won’t.  All of this drab, drab, drab; with some truly horrible acting that could give anyone the giggles, before a rushed third act squares things up and justifies the cop’s actions.  Of the cast, only Willis Bouchey as the hearty Police Captain is someone you’ll recognize.  The lead cop went nowhere fast (so too the actress playing his wife) while his patrol partner died young a few years later from a heart attack.  A sharper script would have stayed focused on those streetwise kids*, all dreaming of roles they never got and soon grew out of.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Teen toughs were primed for lampoon as far back as Jerry Lewis in THE DELICATE DELINQUENT/’57, his first without Dean Martin.  Awful as it is, like so many Lewis pics, there’s one standout scene, here fortunately it’s the opening so there’s no waiting!  And, wouldn’t you know, the sequence might well have been titled INCIDENT IN AN ALLEY . . . With A Garbage Can.

WRONG IS RIGHT (1982)

If you thought slapstick satire of modern world politics (focus MidEast Terrorism) climaxing with the discovery of timed nuclear bombs attached to a flagpole atop NYC’s World Trade Center would have attracted notice as unnerving forecast of the real 9/11 two decades later, think again.  The film, and frankly writer/director Richard Brooks, long gone from being part of the conversation.  Rightfully so in spite of the tempting cast: Headline tv reporter Sean Connery; President George Grizzard; interpreter Katharine Ross, political rival Leslie Nielsen; hardline general Robert Conrad; C.I.A. man John Saxon; Arab interloper Henry Silva; White House Aides G.D. Spradlin & Dean Stockwell; Veep Rosalind Cash; Illegal arms seller Hardy Krüger and so on.  The gist of the thing is that writer Brooks thinks he’s tearing apart modern news & newsroom hypocrisy like Paddy Chayefsky in NETWORK/’76, while director Brooks thinks he’s on to the physical comedy style of Blake Edwards in, say, S.O.B./’81.*  Alas, Brooks hasn’t a comic synapse in his noggin, more grumpy Granddad kidding-on-the-square about the state of the world.  Purposefully politically incorrect, circa 1982 (which is saying something!), but with neither aptitude nor insight on the subject and certainly none of the timing to land his extremely sour jokes.  Then giving Connery a cri de coeur speech on how the news is just an excuse to sell products & garner ratings.  A diatribe lifted straight out of Tom Stoppard’s NIGHT AND DAY on B’way with Maggie Smith in 1979.  Nothing else Brooks does in here quite as shameless.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *While Blake Edwards’ target was The Movies rather than The World, you can see what Brooks must have been aiming for watching Edwards take on Hollywood in S.O.B.  Not a bad idea in theory.  Edwards’ later films got stuck in a personal loop of Mid-Life crises.  Maybe a dose of overactive Chayefsky venom would have been just the ticket to jolt him out of his psychological funk.  And a dose of slapstick good for Chayefsky, too.  (See THE HOSPITAL/’71)    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/02/sob-1981.html 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: As our posters show, Columbia Pictures (above) hadn’t a clue on how to sell this thing.  While Euro-distributors (on your left) thought: Sean Connery?  Pretend it’s James Bond.

NON-STOP (2014)

Hard to imagine a film actor acquiring action movie chops about the time his first AARP card comes in the mail.  If you weren’t working those action genre muscles from your physical prime, it’s probably past ‘sell date’ to start pummeling bad guys or single-handedly taking out drug cartels and having an audience buy it.  But then there’s Liam Neeson, growing only more believable as a physical presence with each staggered step and exhausted punch.  TAKEN/’08 the one that got this late career surge going; after that, all diminished returns.  Right?  Well, actually no.  Diminished returns for official TAKEN sequels & unofficial reboots, but others working territory a bit to the side can look as good or even better than the progenitor.  Ergo, NON-STOP.  A thriller, half suspense/half whodunit (best on the whodunit side), finds Neeson working undercover as an Air Marshall who’s seen better days: Family lost/Alcohol found.  Here, he’s fighting an unknown nutcase, one of 150 passengers & crew on an international flight he’s working, threatening to kill someone every twenty minutes if he doesn’t get 150 mill.  Yikes!  Cleverly worked up by director Jaume Collet-Serra* & scripters John W. Richardson, Christopher Roach & Ryan Engle, the plotting and murders are complicated enough to earn some bad laughs as it hurtles along, and there’s too much rubbery CGI effects at the explosive ending, but a remarkably strong cast for the genre and Neeson’s craggy authority when in personal distress keep it together.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Neeson and Collet-Serra followed next year with RUN ALL NIGHT/’15.  The first of these Neeson action films to fail commercially; naturally it’s the best of the lot.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/10/run-all-night-2015.html

FIRST SPACESHIP ON VENUS / aka DER SCHWEIGENDE STERN / THE SILENT STAR (1960)

Don’t let the Kiddie Matinee title for the butchered Stateside cut mislead you, the original 93" Communist Bloc release, an East German/Polish co-production by award-winning director Kurt Maetzig from a Stanislaw Lem novel, is pretty sober-sided Sci-Fi for the period.  And why not?  The first film to try something approaching realism in space was also from Germany, Fritz Lang’s technically groundbreaking UFA silent FRAU IM MOND/’29.  (Technically, this film not too far from M-G-M’s FORBIDDEN PLANET/’55.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/05/forbidden-planet-1956.html)  And, as opposed to NASA’s all male/all-white astronaut bourgeoisie, behind the Iron Curtain crews are international.  (Or is it ‘Interntionale?’)  Multi-cultural/multi-ethnic cosmonauts with a German pilot leading one African Black*, one Chinese, a Pole, a white American physicist, even a female from Japan in spite of past entanglement with the Russian co-pilot.  OBJECT: Venus.  VEHICLE: Redirected Mars Rocket, now Venus bound.  MISSION: Find the cause of a crash landing on Earth by a ‘manned’ probe from Venus.  The choicest parts in here come early on (same true for Fritz Lang’s moon journey); once we land on Venus, the allegory of possible nuclear destruction on Earth takes over the narrative.  But the spacey ‘60s look in design and neat-o model effects hold loads of interest.  Plus: good restoration with subtitles and high resolution FREE on youtube.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xDtliUL2bo)  Be sure to check out the techie uniforms, they might be cheerleaders at Space U: Team ‘A’; Team ‘M’ and Team ‘T.’   Plus, great metal robotic insects still ‘alive’ on Venus and even a C3PO precursor named Omega.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, FRAU IM MOND; or THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL/’51 for the likely inspiration to this allegory.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/05/frau-im-mond-woman-in-moon-1929.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Any cinematographer will tell you, surface textures & colors reflect light differently.  So while it’s great, and rather unusual in 1960, to see a Black cosmonaut on screen, ensemble shots haven’t been lit to properly handle light & dark complexions within a single frame.  Compositions where he’s included with other shipmates leave this African crew member all but depersonalized by prioritizing lighter skin tones in some of the subtlest racism ever seen on film.

MAN IN THE MIDDLE / THE WINSTON AFFAIR (1964)

Right before slam dunking his first James Bond assignment (GOLDFINGER/’64), director Guy Hamilton made this fairly standard, but good, WWII courtroom drama.  Based on a Howard Fast novel (hence its Stateside alternate title), it holds up better than many more famous WWII Court Martial pics.  Opening with a literal bang, American officer Keenan Wynn shoots his British equivalent Lieut. at their Indian base camp.  With the war effort building toward a close, and international armies converging in immense staging areas, the top brass in the area want to see a quick & tidy death sentence to keep peace between Allied powers.  Enter Robert Mitchum, recovering war hero/wounded Lt. Col./occasional Army lawyer; just the man to run a lost-cause honest defense, per superior officer Barry Sullivan.  If only Mitchum didn’t take his position quite so honestly.  Helped by a pair of brash Army legal eagles out of Manhattan; a pretty nurse with inside info whom Mitchum quickly falls for (France Nuyen); and reluctant Army shrink Sam Wanamaker, the case may well save a life, but slow up the war effort.  From Mitchum on down, everyone’s tip-top here, with the real locations adding verisimilitude under Wilkie Cooper’s lensing.  Just bear in mind this is Howard Fast territory, so hard decisions made a little too easy/a little too clear cut: Wynn racist, pathological, paranoid; Trevor Howard’s surprise witness published, university-tenured, world-renowned psychiatrist familiar with the case.  But well handled and (keeping CAPE FEAR/’62 in mind*) it's fun to watch Mitchum take on the Gregory Peck role for a change.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *The original CAPE FEAR/’62  -  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/cape-fear-1962.html)

THE NIGHT WALKER (1964)

Amicable a decade after divorcing, Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor no doubt saw the writing on wall when Horror Schlockmeister William Castle stunt casted them in one of his underfunded fright fests.  Stanwyck, still in fine shape at 57, took the hint and switched to tv after this, Taylor, looking much older than his 53 years, had already sunk to tv, Disney & Embassy films, soldiered on even with the touch of death on his once handsome face.  No horror pic, though Castle works hard pretending so (as does PSYCHO scripter Robert Bloch), but a ‘gaslighting’ setup with Stanwyck living & screaming thru a series of nightmares induced by a trio of false friends out to grab everything she inherited after her creepy husband died in a house fire.  Castle tosses in plenty of mumbo-jumbo from beginning to end: dream sequences, pseudo-scientific explanations, extended half-reel prologue, schlock cuts and things that go bump in the night.  It’s quite a comedown for these vet stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, since unlike some of their peers who knew how to tear into these things with relish; as actors, Stanwyck too honest/Taylor too limited, neither with a camp bone in their body.  (Stanwyck could play this stuff straight, see SORRY, WRONG NUMBER/’48 while Taylor unable to play the surprise baddie, see CONSPIRATOR/’49.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/08/conspirator-1949.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Attention to the music by Vic Mizzy on a harpsichord kick with tv’s THE ADDAMS FAMILY also out this year.  Attention to Stanwyck who, for the only time in her career, is caught anticipating a reaction.  (Or did Castle mistime the edit?)  And finally to all the looped dialogue on such a simple shoot with tv production values.  Something wrong with the sound equipment?  (And be sure to click on our poster to expand it so you can read all the exciting bullet points!)

CHOP SHOP (2007)

With his documentary background, writer/director Ramin Bahrani gets all the details right on this ground up look at life on the streets for a toughened tween, hustling out a living in Willets Point, Queens, a sort of open air warren of competing car repair & body workshops.  (The neighborhood long eyed for a tear-down/redevelopment plan currently projected to start . . . soon?)  The lead kid in the story, non-pro Alejandro Polanco, may look like an Oliver Twist type, but he’s 100% Artful Dodger, a barker for his garage to motorists looking for the best deal on car parts or repair, living illegally in a shack inside the garage where he works; learning the tools of the trade, learning the biz, and picking up whatever temp gigs he can, tagging along with immigrants on the hunt for day-work, selling counterfeit DVDs, grabbing the occasional purse at nearby Mets Stadium or at the U.S. Tennis Open.  But his real goal is to open a food catering truck with his older sister.  Living with him in his little hut, she works at another food truck and also hustles blow jobs on the side.  Superbly observed and paced by Bahrani, immediately a real filmmaker, check out his careful control of palette and mood as the story darkens and opportunities close down around the siblings.  What he can’t do is freshen up tropes in a story  so familiar they feel telegraphed even when they’re not.  (He does triumphantly setup a stash of cash to be stolen only to leave it alone.)  A tough life even for a kid who’s easily hurt, but quickly assuaged.  And, as he’s never gone to school and is functionally illiterate, getting into trouble since he can’t read the fine print details that come with his dream of independence.  Great use of the limits of trust and casual friendship in this closed community, it’s one of those films where you’d love to know how everything played out over the years.  Especially as they’re supposed to be shutting the whole place down.  Simply from a documentary viewpoint, what wouldn’t we give to have this sort of living record of something comparable like historic Les Halles, the Belly of Paris.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Similar city street urchins found in Mira Nair’s SALAAM BOMBAY!/’88.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/02/salaam-bombay-1988.html